Month: July 2009

A force acting upon or within a mass or rock, expressed in terms of unit weight per surface area such as tons per square inch. Stress is any force which acts to deform rocks: (1) Compression – a stress that acts to press or squeeze rocks together. (2) Tension – a stress that acts to stretch a rock, or pull a rock apart. (3) Shear – a stress which acts tangential to a plane through a body, causing two contiguous parts to slide past each other

US holds strategic reserves of oil and gas. The reserve achieved its originally mandated goal of 90 days of import protection in 1983 and reached 118 days’ supply in 1985 before Congress discontinued funding to buy oil and purchases were suspended in 1994. Current reserves as of beginning of 2008 stand at about 58 days of domestic demand. The amount currently being placed in the SPR of 70,000 b/d of royalty-in-kind oil is less than one tenth of one percent of the daily global demand of 85 million b/d. The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the largest stockpile of government-owned emergency crude oil in the world. Established in the aftermath of the 1973-74 oil embargo, the SPR provides the President with a powerful response option should a disruption in commercial oil supplies threaten the U.S. economy. It also allows the United States to meet part of its International Energy Agency obligation to maintain emergency oil stocks, and it provides a national defense fuel reserve. The SPR has a total capacity of 727 million barrels

SSVs are the fleet of offshore support vessels that provide what is known as ‘good prospect of rescue and recovery’ for the personnel onboard offshore installations platforms whilst carrying out their work on site.

A wellhead installed on the sea floor and controlled remotely from a platform, a floating production facility or land

Refers to rock formations lying beneath long, horizontal layers of salt. These rock formations may contain hydrocarbons. Oil and gas exploration in which prospects exist below salt layers